Shadow of the Dragon

31

Captain Cole Condiff, skipper of the Virginia-class fast attack submarine USS Indiana (SSN 789), stood in the control room, behind the officer of the deck. They were three hundred feet under the Arctic ice, eight hundred miles south of the North Pole, approaching the point where the Beaufort Sea became the Chukchi.

A second U.S. sub, the Seawolf-class USS Connecticut, had departed the latest ICEX the week before, but Condiff had held his boat back, running drills, waiting. Russian subs were well aware of the U.S. Navy’s biennial Arctic combat and tactical readiness exercise. There had been nearly fifty personnel at the camp above the ice for almost three weeks. The Russians did the same kind of training, maybe even more, if you considered the proximity of their sub bases to large sheets of ice. The Chinese were throwing up ice camps, too, attempting to show some polar connection. Their subs were also here, or so he’d heard, charting, learning.

With new shipping lanes and trade routes coming into play as the ice opened up more and more each year, every nation with a toehold in the Arctic worked to make sure they had the right tools to navigate and protect their interests. If the Russians knew about ICEX, then they would be lurking, waiting on the fringes for the U.S. subs to go home.

Captain Condiff’s predatory drive kicked in at the thought, and he’d decided to let the Connecticut draw away any lurkers, and then he would fall in behind, hunting his way home.

Indiana had been under the ice for six days — since they’d said good-bye to their friends at the ice camp. Thick floe and huge daggerlike ice keels prevented deployment of the ELF antenna, making communication with the outside world impossible. Condiff expected open water by the end of watch, where the ELF could pick up any traffic from command. Until then, his sonar technicians watched the wavering green waterfall on their screens for the sound signatures of a Russian submarine.

Condiff took a deep breath. He was long past smelling it, but knew there was an odor there that those on land found disquieting if not disgusting. His wife made him wash his uniforms three times as soon as he walked in the door after a deployment. Even then, she relegated them to designated plastic totes that stayed on a shelf in the garage until the next time he went to sea.

Reusable water bottle in one hand, the skipper chatted with one of the newest members of his crew, a twentysomething woman named Ramirez. A freckled farm-boy lieutenant from Nebraska named Lowdermilk was officer of the deck at the moment, leaving Condiff to conduct his training. Unlike older submarines, Virginia-class subs like Indiana had consolidated the watch positions of dive, helm, outboard, and chief of the watch into pilot and copilot who both sat at a console in front of the officer of the deck, who gave them maneuvering orders. Combat control consoles ran along the starboard side. Sonar technicians sat at consoles to port, opposite combat control.

Along with approximately ten percent of her crewmates, this was Ramirez’s first tour. Participation in ICEX was a surprise bonus for these newbies, since Blue Noses, submariners who’d crossed the Arctic Circle, were relatively rare. It was one of the few missions a young submariner could brag about while ashore without getting into trouble.

Ramirez was taciturn, a quality Condiff liked if he did not share. Even better, she was a quick study. Her formal training was to be a sonar tech, or STS. Captain Condiff had no doubt that she would eventually become an outstanding one, but before that, he liked to have his newbies take a tour through the specialties, sonar, combat control, engineering, communications, among others, even the galley. Everyone on the sub drilled in emergency procedures, so she got plenty of that as well. Not only had these few weeks of round-the-boat training taught her a little about most of the systems, she’d been able to see firsthand how components of the crew acted and interacted. The rest of the crew also got to know Ramirez and her fellow newbies.

Each new submariner also spent half a day shadowing him. Mentally exhausting to be sure, but it had borne fruit in the form of a crew of cohesive submariners and junior officers who were ingrained with the concept of servant leadership.

Today was Ramirez’s day. She stood off his left shoulder, Rite in the Rain notebook and pen in hand, eager to learn.

“Tell me about our enemy, Seaman Ramirez,” Condiff said.

“Our enemy, sir? Here, at this moment?”

“Yes,” Condiff said. “Here on this sub.”

“… Russia, sir?”

“Not at the moment,” Condiff said. He turned to Lowdermilk. “Lieutenant?”

“The sea, Skipper,” Lowdermilk said. “The sea is our enemy.”

“You are correct, Mr. Lowdermilk,” Condiff said. “You may continue driving my boat.”

Lowdermilk grinned. “Aye, aye, sir.”

Condiff took a swig from the water bottle and winked at Ramirez. “I’m not kidding, you know. Even now, Mother Ocean would love to crush our hull with her bare hands. And if she’s unable to do that, she would sink and flood and freeze us without a second thought. Don’t believe me? Punch a tiny hole in the sub and then try to make friends with her. No, ma’am, the sea is an invasive species.” He took another drink and then raised the bottle as if in a toast. “And I love it more than just about any other place on the planet.”

He gestured at the nearest sonar technician. “So Petty Officer Markette, there, is keeping an eye on a surface ship making its way through the ice… Right, Petty Officer Markette?”

“Aye, Captain,” the STS said. “Bearing two-five-five. Heavy, slow screws. Turn count suggests it’s the Healy. Getting a lot of interference from the ice floe, but we’re estimating her at eight miles.”

The U.S. Coast Guard icebreaker Healy had been in the area before they dove. They’d picked up her groaning screws off and on throughout the week as she maneuvered through the ice, along with the periodic groans of a smaller boat they assumed to be an Arctic research vessel.

“Thank you kindly, Petty Officer Markette.” Condiff glanced at Ramirez again. “Ice… just frozen water… so still the enemy…”

Markette sat up straighter in his chair.

“Con. Sonar. Contact,” he said, all business. “Sound transient, far, bearing two-four-zero… Explosion. I think it was a torpedo.”

“I have the con,” Condiff said, moving forward.

“Captain has the con.” Lowdermilk stepped out of the way, deftly nudging Seaman Ramirez with him.

“Station a tracking party,” Condiff said before turning toward sonar.

Lieutenant Lowdermilk relayed the order on the 1 MC, or main communications circuit, alerting the entire ship that a contact needed tracking, but the captain was not quite ready for battle stations. Designated crew, along with the XO, were needed in control.

“Report,” Condiff said.

“Nothing, sir,” Petty Officer Markette said. “The sound of the launch blended with ice noise at first. The fish launched and then detonated… six seconds later.”

“The Healy?” Condiff said, feeling bile rise in his gut.

“Heavy screws are still present, sir,” Markette said. “Turn count is accelerating. She’s speeding up.”

“Assessment?”

Markette listened to a playback of the noise. “There it is,” he said. “Hiss, crack, boom. I think the transient was a sub firing a torpedo through the ice.”

“No other contacts?”

“No other contacts,” Markette said.

Lowdermilk said, “Shall we find open water and send up an X-SUB?”

The X-SUB was a communication buoy developed by ALSEAMAR, that, when deployed by tether, allowed two-way communication between the submarine and ships or land while staying at depth.

“Not yet,” Condiff said. “I’m not ready to show our hand on the surface quite yet — even with a little buoy. No telling what kind of air assets are up there.” He addressed the petty officers in the pilot and copilot seats, giving them the coordinates and speed he wanted.

“… Take us toward the sound of gunfire…”